Live and taped television and radio programming, movies, and various audio presentations oftentimes include profanity, slurs, and other words or phrases that a particular person may find objectionable. In many instances, people actively avoid a presentation because of the presence of objectionable language. Moreover, it is often the case that parents seek to prohibit their children from being exposed to such language.
Products exist that can mute an entire phrase containing an objectionable word. However, muting an entire phrase often results in large incomplete sections of dialogue—resulting in poor viewer comprehension and increased viewer frustration. The overall result oftentimes degrades the quality of the audio presentation.
A typical television set, set-top box, or the like includes various processing elements to receive television signals, including both an audio component and video component, and to play the audio and display the video signals. However, the processing elements are dedicated to the processing of the audio/visual signals, and have little excess bandwidth to perform other operations.
Aspects of the present invention were conceived with this background in mind. The present invention involves an apparatus and method for controlling play of an audio signal, whether alone or forming a part of an audio/visual signal. Embodiments conforming to the present invention may be configured to mute only objectionable words from an audio stream. Further embodiments of the present invention may be adapted to run on conventional audio/visual processing equipment, such as television processors, set-top boxes, and the like, with little or no modification of existing physical platforms, and may be adapted to run in real time if necessary for the particular application. The details of embodiments of the present invention are discussed in more detail below.